brisingr | Page 5

clamor that echoed over the
hills. The acolytes accompanied the throbbing of the
bells with their own cries, groaning and shouting in
an ecstasy of passion.
At the rear of the grotesque procession trudged a
comet’s tail of inhabitants from DrasLeona: nobles,
merchants, tradesmen, several high-ranking military
commanders, and a motley collection of those less
fortunate, such as laborers, beggars, and common
foot soldiers.

14 | P a g e Brisingr – Christopher Paolini
Eragon wondered if Dras-Leona’s governor, Marcus
Tábor, was somewhere in their midst.
Drawing to a stop at the edge of the precipitous
mound of scree that ringed Helgrind, the priests
gathered on either side of a rust colored boulder with
a polished top. When the entire column stood
motionless before the crude altar, the creature upon
the litter stirred and began to chant in a voice as
discordant as the moaning of the bells. The shaman’s
declamations were repeatedly truncated by gusts of
wind, but Eragon caught snatches of the ancient
language—strangely twisted and mispronounced—
interspersed with dwarf and Urgal words, all of which
were united by an archaic dialect of Eragon’s own
tongue. What he understood caused him to shudder,
for the sermon spoke of things best left unknown, of a
malevolent hate that had festered for centuries in the
dark caverns of people’s hearts before being allowed
to flourish in the Riders’ absence, of blood and
madness, and of foul rituals performed underneath a
black moon.
At the end of that depraved oration, two of the lesser
priests rushed forward and lifted their master—or
mistress, as the case might be—off the litter and onto
the face of the altar. Then the High Priest issued a
brief order. Twin blades of steel winked like stars as
they rose and fell. A rivulet of blood sprang from each
of the High Priest’s shoulders, flowed down the
leather-encased torso, and then pooled across the
boulder until it overflowed onto the gravel below.
Two more priests jumped forward to catch the crimson flow in goblets that, when filled to the rim,
were distributed among the members of the congregation, who eagerly drank.

15 | P a g e Brisingr – Christopher Paolini
“Gar!” said Roran in an undertone. “You failed to
mention that those errant fleshmongers, those gore-
bellied, boggle-minded idiot worshipers were
cannibals.”
“Not quite. They do not partake of the meat.”
When all the attendees had wet their throats, the
servile novitiates returned the High Priest to the litter
and bound the creature’s shoulders with strips of
white linen. Wet blotches quickly sullied the virgin cloth.
The wounds seemed to have no effect upon the High Priest, for the limbless figure rotated back toward the
devotees with their lips of cranberry red and
pronounced, “Now are you truly my Brothers and
Sisters, having tasted the sap of my veins here in the
shadow of almighty Helgrind. Blood calls to blood,
and if ever your Family should need help, do then
what you can for the Church and for others who acknowledge the power of our Dread Lord... To affirm
and reaffirm our fealty to the Triumvirate, recite with
me the Nine Oaths... By Gorm, Ilda, and Fell Angvara,
we vow to perform homage at least thrice a month, in the hour before dusk, and then to make an offering of
ourselves to appease the eternal hunger of our Great
and Terrible Lord... We vow to observe the strictures
as they are presented in the book of Tosk... We vow to
always carry our Bregnir on our bodies and to forever
abstain from the twelve of twelves and the touch of a
many-knotted rope, lest it corrupt...”
A sudden rise in the wind obscured the rest of the
High Priest’s list. Then Eragon saw those who listened
take out a small, curved knife and, one by one, cut
themselves in the crook of their elbows and anoint the
altar with a stream of their blood. Some minutes
later, the angry breeze subsided and Eragon again

16 | P a g e Brisingr – Christopher Paolini
heard the priest: “... and such things as you long and
lust for will be granted to you as a reward for your
obedience... Our worship is complete. However, if any
now stand among you who are brave enough to
demonstrate the true depth of their faith, let them
show themselves!”
The audience